Relayer10

Newspapers: Three Nails, One Coffin

"Slight" erosion??? If you mean small loss between fasfax reports...that is slight. If you mean the steady decline over the past ten years or so....it's anything but "slight". It's catastrophic. Especially in metros. Check your most recent ABC circ numbers....DEDUCT all NIE, single copy, and non paid circulation. Compare to 1999. You are NSA, and are well known for removing single copy circ from your buys, and zoning out areas near the outer boundaries of the RTZ...because the density does not meet your clients desire for ROI

It is a long known that the farther you move from the City Zone center, the lower the circulation home delivery number, in the vast majority of cities. Many dailies have expanded their reported City Zone in their ABC to artificially inflate the suburb number, using the far denser City Zone numbers averaged out.

I will concede that the defined suburb will be different..., market to market. Amend "most" to "many". In major metros, the suburbs expand up to 50 miles away. In small towns, that distance is much smaller. In those instances, SOME of the suburbs might be legitimately within a City Zone. In most major cities, many of the most affluent suburbs are well outside the City Zone...and the Retail Trade Zone (EXCLUDING the City Zone, and NIE and all other Single Copy) are FAR below the numbers of the City Zone. Many dailies have TMC's that cover non subscribers because their density shrunk so low that they had to. Most national advertisers (and Media Buying companies) did not place ads in those TMC- because it was not paid.

Your customers wanted to trim expense, and believe that a lot of single copy just can't be verified as legit- due to NIE and event sales reported as average daily paid- (which artificially inflates paid numbers). They began zoning out single copy years ago. I've been out of the biz for several years, and the practice may have changed in some areas- but I suspect it has not.

Valassis is absolutely a competitor to newspapers- and they take as much national business as they can.. Newspapers were very short sighted during the rise of Valassis...and took them (and the national coupons) either free, or so cheap it actually LOST money.

As a sidenote...I no longer have access to ABC numbers, and do not have the vast research capabilities of the NSA...but I will take an educated guess that almost all newspapers have seen very significant drops in home delivered paid circulation. Advertisers vote with their feet...and judging by the draconian drop in the stock price and market caps of newspaper companies...they have voted.